I can be only what I am
by Dayla Nighthook
Summary: After Izumo swallowed the fake Shikon no Tama he died. But what would happen if Izumo didn't die, but had to live as he is; Half Demon?
1. Waking and Revelations

Authors Note: I found Izumo to be a fascinating character, and his death in the anime saddned me, for I thought that they could have put more into him. However, that would have detracted from the main characters. So, this is a spin-off of what I think happens next if Izumo didn't die.   
  
Hopefully; Enjoy.  
  
Disclaimer: Nor Inuyasha or anything about the show is mine. Nope. Don't own a single frame. However, this story is mine. Please do not post my story without my permission.   
  
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"Speaking"  
  
'Thinking'  
  
Emphasis  
  
sound effects  
  
{flashback}  
  
Consciousness was a slow friend to Izumo. At first he seemed to be wading through a thick fog, not wanting to go forward but seeing no reason to turn back around. He couldn't see what was ahead, but he didn't care, at first. When the fog finally, slowly lifted, he decided that maybe going back might have been more preferable.   
  
He ached all over, and his head seemed enshrouded in a warm haze. It was difficult to think, and although his head pounded it didn't hurt. It was more... uncomfortable.   
  
He felt sick. His stomach twisted and gurgled and he could just barely keep himself from vomiting.   
  
Cringing from the queasyness and pain, Izumo slowly opened his eyes and saw... an ordinary thatch roof. Like something one would find in the homes of a farmer or other low-class human.   
  
'Where am I?' he thought through thoughts muzzy with that glorious combination of pain, sickness, and sleep.   
  
Suddenly, the events before unconsciousness caught up to him.  
  
His body gave a convuslive jerk and he turned, managing to vomit over the side of the futon he was laying on before he got it on himself. Only when he was finished and the dry heaves had stopped did he notice the bowl set there for just that reason. Feeling disgusted with himself and slightly embarrassed, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to remove the flecks of vomit and spit there. He paused when he caught sight of his hand.  
  
Slowly he examined his slightly-shaking hand. His hand looked normal, for the most part. But his nails... they were long and came to dangerous-looking points. His eyes were wide with horror, and he sent a frightened glance toward the window (seeing, meanwhile, that he was alone in a hut that contained very little other than his futon and a fire pit), but the sun was streaming through, with no indication of night coming any time soon. But his hands...  
  
Only then did he realize that he could feel something twitch behind him.   
  
His head whiped to the side, and over his shoulder he could see a length of black with a tufted end. A long, cowlike tail sheathed in black fur and attached to his lower back. His gaze continued to his waist and legs, also covered in the thick black fur down legs that ended in cloven hooves. He brought his shaking hands down to his legs and felt the coarse hair, no... fur... that covered his lower half. Fur like Gyuoh's.   
  
Even with a clouded mind, Izumo's thoughts whirled. Could this monstrous form be the result of his swallowing all those false Shikon no Tamas? As if in a reminder of the act that almost killed him, Izumo's stomach lurched and he almost vomited again. Instead, he lay back down completly on the futon, drawing the blanket once more over him and curling up like a child and ignoring how the scent of his vomit was stronger now that he was laying right next to it. He ignored the smell. His elbows, however, brushed against the hated fur on his knees and he immediately straightened out just enough so that he wouldn't touch his legs.   
  
Monstrous. He was neither Izumo nor Gyuoh, but a vile cross between the two. He created the false Shikon no Tamas so he could get rid of Gyuoh, not make the damnedable monster a part of him permanently!  
  
Izumo chuckled slightly. Even now he could see the irony of the situation.   
  
There were slight steps just outside the doorway, and before Izumo (or was he Gyuoh?) could appreciate how his hearing had gotten so sharp, a young girl entered the small hut.   
  
She caught his eye and gasped, fumbling with the bowl she was carrying and almost dropped it. Her face red, he steadied the bowl in her hands after she spilled a great dea lof water over herself and the floor and slowly, hesitantly, started walking towards him.   
  
"You-you're awake," she stated nervously when she approached the prostrate man.   
  
"Yes," Izumo simply said. As he spoke he noticed his teeth still had a sharp edge to them, like Gyuoh. So his lower half wasn't the only thing that changed...  
  
Her eyes caught sight of the puddle growing on the flow, and her eyes flew wide. "Oh! Um... I'll just clean that up." With that, she set the bowl of water down well away from the vomit and raced to the other side of the room. She withdrew a towel from something out of Izumo's sight and returned with it. She knelt down on the floor and began scrubbing at the puddle, keeping her fingers out of the mess yet still cleaning it up thoroughly.  
  
Izumo could see as she worked, however, that she was tense, and her hands were shaking. She was also careful to make sure that she was not getting to near. Every time he shifted she would flinch away very slightly.   
  
'She's terrified of me,' Izumo thought, his eyes closing against the headache that was building up behind his eyes. 'And with good reason. Who isn't terrified of a demon, even if he is a hanyou...'   
  
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Authors note: Somewhat short for a first chapter, but I promise that everything after this will be a great deal longer. 


	2. Walking is not as easy as it seems

I'm glad there's more than one Izumo fan out there!

Disclaimer: Second verse, same as the first. Don't own them. Wish I did. Yanno, I've heard this does nothing legally to save my arse. Therefore, I'll do away with the disclaimers every chapter and hereon in everyone realizes Inuyasha isn't mine, and never will be no matter how much I hope otherwise. If it was, I'd have the characters do _unspeakable_ things to each other. Hmm. Kind of a good thing Inuyasha isn't mine, eh?

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The water the girl had brought with her when she first entered the hut was intended to wash Izumo with; but now that the hanyou had awakened on his own, she left him to bathe himself.

Izumo soaked the cloth provided in the bowl of water and ran the cloth along his skin, picking up dirt and dust and the sprinkling of blood, and refreshing his skin with it's slight chill.

Once he got to his waist, however, his hands faltered. He didn't want to touch the hated fur that covered his lower half, didn't even want to acknowledge the transformation. But the fur was still matted with dirt and blood from his battle, and his naturally clean tendencies waged war in his mind with his disgust at what he'd become.

Gritting his teeth, he soaked the cloth once more and began to wash his legs, trying to only touch the hated fur with the cloth, and not his fingers.

The fur was short, thick, and coarse. Much like a shorthaired dog, or even a bovine. The dirt and dried blood came off surprisingly easily, easier than Izumo had expected. Due to the color – dark brown, almost black – he was forced to actually feel the fur to find the patches of dirt, and had to pick out the knots manually with his fingers. His feet, nothing but hooves now that were cloven like a bull's, were easily cleaned, though he had to feel around the inside of the bottom of the hoof to clean the last of the dirt out. Touching the sharp edge gingerly with his fingers, he wondered if he would need to be shod like a horse or risk damaging the hooves.

Another wave of revulsion crept over him, this time from what he'd become and not from the false Shikon, and he manfully swallowed it down.

He'd failed. He had been working on creating a fake Shikon no Tama for so long, he'd very nearly perfected the process. But a chance to create another, **real** Shikon made him brashly throw away all that he'd achieved, and he allowed Guyouh, that… that **monster** to take control and do something that, were he in his right, sensible, **human** mind, would never have even considered doing. Because of that revolting monster, that hated Guyouh, he was stuck as something in between human and youkai.

With an angry howl, he threw the rag across the room, where it hit the wall with a wet _splat_ and fell to the floor.

He watched as the rag fell into a crumpled, soggy heap on the floor and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose in mild irritation. Such sudden bursts of anger were not like him and, though he felt that he was entitled to an explosion, he was still surprised at his reaction.

His tail whipped slowly behind him, and the bunching feeling of the fur on the limb reminded him that he had yet to clean it, or even his hair. And the rag was all the way across the room.

Izumo looked down at his bovine legs with a wry grimace. Of course, he had used those legs whenever he was Guyouh, but the rest of the body was specifically designed to walk on those legs. His human torso and the different curvature of the spine should make walking an… adventure. One he didn't feel up to attempting at the moment.

But he was still filthy. The dirt on his tail and in his hair made him itch, and the greasy, clumped feeling of unclean fur was uncomfortable, to say the least.

Slowly, careful of his balance on unstable hooves, he rose to a crouch, his hands bracing him on the floor. Then, even more slowly, more carefully, he rose to stand, hooves spread for balance. Once he felt stable, he tried straightening his spine to a more proper posture. Then, with much more speed than he took to stand, he fell back onto the floor, inadvertently sitting on his tail as he did so.

"Ow!" he yelped. With a growl of frustration, he pulled the tail out from under him and smacked the offending limb, wincing in pain once he upset the already painful injury.

Never in his life had he had so much trouble just getting clean.

Nor had he had such a trigger temper before, he realized. Guyouh would do whatever came to mind, inhibitions completely lowered, no shields and no societal rules to govern his behavior. However, the human Izumo was cooler, calm, collected… whenever he had a problem he would devise a solution and follow it through. If it didn't work, he'd figure out what went wrong and begin again, the goal still fresh in mind even if the means were different.

But his behavior ever since he awoke was different. Though mentally he **thought **like Izumo, his emotional reactions were more like Guyouh. He reacted to failure with frustration and anger, even if his planning was more precise and methodical than what Guyouh could achieve. He thought back on the disjointed, rapidly flickering thought processes that he experienced as Guyouh and shuddered. He knew that, were he in his more rational state of mind that night, he would have never made that fatal mistake of swallowing the fake shikon.

He sighed andshook his head to clear it. He still needed to get clean, and it was time to use that human ingenuity to get to the rag and complete his goal; cleanliness.

When he'd tried to stand, he'd lost his balance once he attempted to straighten his spine and stand with a more proper posture. With the heavy tail weighing him down, and the unusual construction of his legs and feet, that posture would just not work. He'd need to balance himself out in order to stand without toppling over again. Perhaps by leaning forward, he could work out enough counterbalance so that he could stand and walk efficiently, if not entirely properly. He could also use the tail as a sort of balance beam. Or perhaps not lean forward… more like slouch. Yes, that should do.

Standing was the easy part. Distance his feet far enough apart for balance, and use his legs to propel him upwards. Easy enough. Once he was vertical, this time he didn't try to straighten his spine, but kept the wary crouch.

With a deep, steadying breath, he took a step forward. And another. And another until he had crossed the room, hooves making an interesting sound of wood on wood with every stride,and could crouch and pick up the rag. Once he'd gotten his balance correct, walking was surprisingly easy, and he could understand why he as Guyouh always walked with the same lumbering, posture; it was easier and more efficient than a stride designed more for an aesthetic property than anything else.

It grated on Izumo, who had been brought up, perhaps not as a nobleman, but certainly higher-class than the average villager, to have to walk as a lumbering monster, but it had to do.

His brow creased with anger at the thought.

_Why_ would it have to do? Why did he have to suffer through this misshapen form for any longer than he had to? Before, other humans were certain that he was human at first sight, at least during the day. Now there was no hiding for him. Humans would fear him for the demon in his blood and now very obviously in his body, and demons could smell thehuman in him and would want to kill him just out of spite.

Inuyasha… how had the other hanyou managed to live so long the way he was? At night Izumo was fully demon, during the day completely human. He could hide amongst others of his kind during either the day or night. Hiding in plain sight, as it were. But Inuyasha did not change as he did; he looked the same both day and night. Obviously he had to have a period in which he lost his demon blood, but it was not dictated by the sun and moon as clearly as Izumo's.

He sighed as he paced back to the futon on the floor, this time moving much easier now that he had the hang of walking.

Now what could he do? He couldn't hide any longer. His life was over…

The mat that covered the doorway to the hut was pulled aside, and Izumo glanced over at the doorway as a figure darkened the portal, instinctively pulling the blanket over his misshapen legs to hide them from sight. He couldn't quite make out the form; the sun behind the paused figure cast the person's featuresinto deep shadow, turning them into a misshapen lump that could be either human or demon.

"Who's there?" he demanded, his heart pounding. He was glad to hear that his voice didn't quiver with the fear and nervousness he felt growing in him, but his voice had a deeper, rougher quality he wasn't able to identify at first as his own.

The person didn't reply, but took slow, careful steps into the main (and only) room in the hut, and sat gingerly at the fire pit near the center. Izumo could tell that the deliberate movements were not out of fear or caution of Izumo, as he first suspected, but out of great age. The man – for it was a man, hecould tell nowin the fading light– was so aged and withered he looked ready to blow away on the first stiff breeze. He could easily be half Izumo's height, dwarfed by brittle bones and a back permanently bent into a crooked half-circle. All that was left of the man's hair were a few wispy threads. His face was lined with thick wrinkles, and his hands stiff and gnarled into twisted and hooked claws with arthritis. Even with such claw-like hands, the man was very obviously human, a fact that made Izumo all the more aware of his own lack of humanity.

"Who are you?" he asked, not really up to entertaining company, but he supposed that due to the man's actions that the hut – wherever it was – was the old man's home.

"Hanna said you were awake," the old man said, completely ignoring the question. "Are you hungry, half-breed? Thirsty?"

"Don't call me that," Izumo growled at the title. He'd worked to be recognized as something other than what his hated blood gave him, and he would **not** allow this man to so casually slur him so!

Izumo's eyes caught his hand, still clutching the blanket thrown over his lap. The fingers were twitching in anger, the knuckles standing white against his skin. He forced himself to take a deep breath, steadying his heartbeat and his nerves. He shouldn't get so angry over the old man… there was no need to. Still, it was difficult to calm down. He could feel his tail lashing behind him in irritation; a foreign and grotesque sensation.

"I'm fine," he snapped, still miffed at the man's casual statement of his bloodline. "I **would**, however, like to know where I am, and who you are."

The man snorted to himself and began raking the dying embers in the fire, tossing in a couple twigs that caught and sent up feeble flames. "You're in my home, half-breed," the old man said, not paying heed to Izumo's growled order. "That was my grand daughter who was in here earlier. She's been tending your wounds for the past two days, since you were brought here. You were nearly dead," the old man turned to face Izumo, his small black eyes hard. "I would assume that a half-breed, or even a demon could show gratitude to the family who worked hard to save his life."

"Who said I wanted my life to be saved?" said half-breed sighed, looking at his hands resting between his knees. The man's words sparked a feeling of shame in his chest. He _was_ acting like a demon, and the worst of the lot, besides. A little gratitude wouldn't hurt, even if the old man and his grand daughter's good intentions were unwanted. "...Thank you," he said, bowing.

The man waved his hand in a dismissive gesture as he began to heat water over the small fire. The room was getting darker by the moment as the sun began to set, the tiny firelight working hard to take the place of the larger one in the sky and failing miserably. "Think nothing on it," the older human snorted. "If I had my way, you wouldn't be in here in the first place. My name is Bakku, by the way."

"Izumo," the half-breed responded without thinking, a slight frown marring his features a second later. Should be he continuing to call himself that, as he was not completely 'Izumo' anymore? With a mental shrug, he continued on to his next worry; it was too late to take back what he'd said already.

"If you don't want me here," Izumo ventured. "Why **am** I here? How did I get here in the first place?"

"A young girl in foreign clothes asked the people of my village to take you in until you recover," Bakku said, his voice nearly emotionless, but with a definate note of weariness in the tone. "Apparently, this isn't the first village she and her... _companions _asked. We agreed on one condition; that they prove you were not harm any of us, and that they exterminate a small group of youkai that had been terrorizing this village for the past few months. They managed to kill the youkai, but there was no way then to prove you would not attack us."

"Then how am I here, if they couldn't prove it?" Izumo asked, eyes narrowed in confusion.

So. Inuyasha and his company were the ones who brought him here. He couldn't understand, for the life of him, why. Why couldn't they have left him lying there and just let him die? He remembered his last words before finally blacking out; "_Am I going to die a human?_" They should have just let him die under that false security. He would have much rather'd die thinking a lie than wake up to the horrible truth.

The old man chuckled humorlessly. "There are wards placed all around my home outside. If you were to attack me and escape, then you would be trapped within here until you starve to death."

Then Izumo understood the reasoning behind putting him in Bakku's home, instead of anyone else's. Such an old man near death would be no great loss to a demon's dubious mercies, except emotionally. He was obviously not expected to wake up as soon as he did, which probably scared the girl, Hanna, out of her wits when she found herself in the same room as a possibly-bloodthirsty demon. Someone would have obviously been watching him since he woke; the girl informing the rest of the village the the halfbreed was awake and aware. They would have seen him walking around, and sent in Bakku as the final test; to see if he would attack.

He suddenly felt a little in awe of Bakku; either a very brave man to risk his life by stepping into the jaws of death, or one resigned to death, not matter when or how it might happen at this point.

"My grand daughter should be coming in soon with supper," Bakku said, breaking Izumo out of his thoughts.

Izumo's gut gave a painful lurch at the thought. The last thing he'd ate were those Shikon no Tama, and they'd made another appearance earlier.

After two days without eating, food was a fine prospect, indeed.


End file.
